Electoral bribery - a tale of two games?

Anecdotal evidence from electoral politics in many Indian states appears to indicate that all the contesting candidates pay reasonably similar amounts of cash bribes to all the voters.

On the face of it, this appears surprising since only one candidate can finally win the electoral race and the electoral race is high stakes and ultra-competitive. In the circumstances, conventional wisdom would have it that atleast some candidates renege on their bribe payments. Further, there should have been a bidding war among contestants to outbid each other in the payment of bribes. So what is the underlying story? Why do "all candidates" bribe "all voters"? Why are the bribes "reasonably similar"?

I am inclined to believe that there are two games being played here. On the one hand, candidates have to weigh the consequence of not making payments given the uncertainty associated with the response of the other side. On the other hand, candidates face the possibility of a potential bidding war in bribe payments.

Consider the first game, which is a defection game. Candidates rationalize bribing voters on the ground that voters have been socialized into expecting bribes and are likely to react negatively (turn against them) if their expectations are not met by any of the candidates. The undeniable reality of an availability bias associated with electoral bribing means that there is a strong likelihood for voters to form expectations about receiving some amount as a bribe. In fact, this expectation is likely to be more pronounced with the incumbent legislator.

The trend is widely pervasive in most parts of India, so much so that any candidate who defects, by not paying or paying less, is perceived to face certain defeat. The table below models a two-candidate electoral game where the decision point is about whether to bribe or not.



This brings us to the second game, the co-operation game. Interestingly, political parties too appear to have internalized the dynamics of the electoral game. Given the inevitability of bribe payments, all of them realize the massive costs associated with a bidding war where one party tries to outbid the other. Since these games are all repeat games, with the same parties fighting over multiple elections, there are sufficient incentives for all sides to embrace an equilibrium and co-operate. The result is an implicit understanding about the magnitude of their bribe payouts. The table below captures this game.



However, there is a small Bayesian twist to this tale which highlights the slippery slope down which both candidates and voters have slipped. Since all parties bribe voters, and voters have to make an electoral choice, they end up making their actual choices based on other considerations. But this choice is conditional on the receipt of bribes. In other words, while voters may make their choice based on several factors, this choice is mostly restricted to those who have paid the bribes. If this line of analysis is true, then all candidates end up defecting and bribing, resulting in a Nash equilibrium. Ironically, atleast in the short-run, the real winner in this is the voter!

So, conditional on receipt of the bribes, what are the factors that drive voting choices? A few intuitive answers include those who paid the larger amount, those perceived as leading the electoral race, those who have struck a chord with some local or emotional issue, and sometimes even those who are perceived as extremely corrupt. Given this, do we have a window of opportunity here to align the individual incentives of voters with general public interest and drive the agenda of contesting candidates accordingly?

ECI nudges voter turnout in India?

The recent Assembly elections in five Indian states saw record voter turnouts. Political pundits promptly attributed it to anger among electorate against widespread corruption and misrule by the incumbent governments.



However, there is a strong likelihood that this increase was not merely because of discontent. After all, anti-incumbency factor is common in Indian democracy, and has rarely resulted in such uniform jumps in voter turnouts.

Incidentally, this was the first election where an electoral slip was delivered to all voters following a directive from the Election Commission of India (ECI). Accordingly, less than a week (most often 3-4 days) before the polling day, an electoral slip containing the date of polling, location of polling booth, serial number of the voter in the voters list, and his/her photo was delivered to all voters. Traditionally, voters slips were disbursed by political parties during the campaigning, especially to their potential voters, so as to encourage them to vote.

If the delivery of voters slips contributed to the inceases in voters turnout, then its transmission would have been through two routes.

1. The voters slips, delivered just before the polling day, may have served to remind voters about their voting obligation and generated a form of social pressure on the voter to turn up to vote. In other words, the slips may have primed the voters into voting.

2. The voters slips - especially the location of the polling station, date and time, and the reassurance about their names being on the voters list - may have served as "channel factors" that bridged the information asymmetry and nudged the voters into visiting the polling booth to cast their votes.

Either way, unwittingly, the ECI may have used a powerful insight from behavioural psychology to nudge citizens into voting. This may also be a powerful reminder to advocates of making voting mandatory that such subtle nudges are a more effective and sustainable approach to increase voter turnout.

PS: There is no confirmation that voters slips were responsible for the increase. The increases in turnout from 2006 to 2011, where voter slips were not used, does complicate drawing ready inferences. I am sure that in the coming days atleast some researchers would use constituency data to tease out effects, if any.